Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 301-316). Also available via World Wide Web.

Contemporary young people would appear to have access to more information than their predecessors in relation to keeping safe by avoiding or reducing risks. However concerns about young people’s perceived increasing risky behaviours have contributed to a growing focus on understanding young people and risk of harm across private and public spheres. This study examines the views, experiences and behaviours of young people and adults in relation to risk of harm to young people and the role of social capital in reducing perceived risk. Using qualitative data with young people and adults in a Scottish community this study develops an understanding of perceptions of the main risks of harm to young people and whether social capital helps to reduce these risks. Social constructions of ‘appropriate’ behaviours for young people to engage in and subsequent constraints imposed by adult-led structures and safety concerns, formed a significant focus of youth theorising in this area. To a certain extent, the findings from this study challenge the conventional construction of young people as risky individuals, by identifying young people’s negotiation and avoidance strategies for keeping safe. However, young people’s experiences and behaviours in public and private spaces remain significantly structured by age and gender. Young people and adults perceive risks associated with alcohol and public spaces to be high and prominent. The continuing notion of risk appears to be evident in young people’s choices about who to socialise with and where, their safety concerns and ultimately how particular social networks can be accessed in order to capitalise on protective measures. Young people’s safety concerns are overwhelmingly related to the ‘other’ in public spaces, reinforcing dominant social constructions of private spaces as safer than public spaces. Strong community ties are highlighted as paradoxical: whilst providing trusting social networks which contribute to loyal and safe peers, the intimacy of such networks is perceived by adults as a barrier to young people’s bridging capital and social mobility. These findings pose difficulties to applying late modernist risk theories which minimise the role of wider social processes in shaping young people’s perceptions. Understanding young people and risk is best served by adopting the sociology of youth and social constructionist perspectives which assert the impact of gender, and in particular the power of age constructions which continue to operate within young people’s lives. Ultimately, perceptions on risk of harm to young people remain infused with gendered and age expectations and constructions.

Avec ce mémoire, j’ai souhaité cerner ce qui serait le propre d’une conversion, soit ce que j’ai appelé un processus de trans-formation. Avec ce concept original, j’ai voulu orienter le regard de l’observateur vers les points de basculement de l’intimité à la publicité qui caractérisent les conversions. Pour ce faire, il m’est apparu fertile de mobiliser et de réhabiliter l’étude des valeurs, un thème classique en sociologie. Des valeurs portées par des individus aux valeurs publiques, la notion de « valeur » recèle le potentiel heuristique nécessaire pour étudier les conversions à différentes échelles d’analyse et par-delà des qualifications a priori religieuses, politiques, sexuelles, etc. Avec cette perspective théorique pragmatique inspirée par Dewey et articulée à la sensibilité aux positions sociales des cultural studies, je me suis donné les moyens d’analyser la façon dont change au cours d’une vie ce à quoi les gens tiennent. Cette représentation dynamique de la conversion vient ajouter des éléments de compréhension à un phénomène trop souvent appréhendé à la lumière de « lectures préférées » modernes et coloniales qui demandaient à être subverties pour redonner place à l’exercice de l’imagination sociologique. Les apports du concept de trans-formation sont illustrés à partir de la comparaison de quatre études de cas individuels : Paul Claudel, un écrivain converti au catholicisme ; Michelle Blanc, une transsexuelle québécoise ; Joe Loya, un Mexican American qui modifie ses conceptions du bien et du mal en isolement carcéral ; et Mlle Pigut qui est devenue « vegan ». / In this master thesis, I had the objective to pinpoint what is peculiar to conversions, that being what I have called a process of trans-formation. With this original concept, I wanted to guide the observer’s eyes toward the shifting points from intimacy to publicity, which are central in conversions process. To do so, I considered fruitful to acknowledge and reinstate the study of values, a classical theme in sociology. From values held by individuals to public values, the notion of “value” comprises the necessary heuristic potential to study conversions at different analytical scales and across assumed qualifications such as religious, political, sexual, etc. My pragmatic theoretical approach informed by Dewey and the cultural studies’ sensibility to social positions allowed me to analyse how what people value changes in the course of their life. This dynamic representation of conversions adds some insights to grasp a phenomenon often tackle from the perspective of modern and colonial “preferred readings”; readings that need to be challenged and revisited as to allow the exercise of sociological imagination. The contributions of the trans-formation’s concept are illustrated by the comparison of four individual case studies: Paul Claudel, a writer converted to Catholicism; Michelle Blanc, a québécoise transsexual; Joe Loya, a Mexican American who modifies his conceptions of good and bad in solitary confinement; and Mlle Pigut who becomes vegan.